In 2020, the British Columbia-based organization JQT Vancouver (Jewish, Queer, Trans) launched “The BC Jewish Queer and Trans Oral History Project.” The mission of JQT is to “queer” Jewish space and to “Jewify” queer space. The goal of this project is to enhance the diversity of the Jewish Museum & Archives of BC’s oral history collection and better represent the full breadth of BC’s Jewish community. From May 25, 2020, to July 14, 2021, during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, JQT Vancouver’s Executive Director Carmel Tanaka conducted 37 interviews with Jewish and queer and/or trans identifying people between the ages 32 and 85 (including one posthumous story) and added a 38th interview on January 12, 2023. JQT Vancouver volunteers transcribed each interview. Among the interviewees, there was a mother with her gay identifying adult son, a social worker who conducted a survey on Jewish queer life in 2004 and another mother who has one child who identifies as part of the LGBTQ+ community. The people interviewed have lived or are currently living in BC. The majority of people interviewed were between the ages of 50 and 80 to ensure these stories are recorded and shared before they are lost. One person interviewed passed away after recording her interview. People interviewed were asked about their lives; parents and grandparents; chosen families; coming out as queer and/or trans; acceptance in the Jewish community as queer and/or trans; and acceptance in the queer and/or trans community as Jewish. As far as JQT Vancouver knows, it is the only collection of Jewish oral histories that is specifically Jewish and queer and/or trans in BC.

The goal of this paper is to give voice to the vibrant Jewish queer and/or trans people who have helped shape Jewish BC and have been influential in queer and/or trans BC for at least one hundred years. The stories are based on people’s memories. Many of the dates given during the interviews are approximations and the accounts are based on a perspective given years after the events took place, and are from a singular person’s point of view. I try to follow the identifying noun and pronoun that is used by the person in the interview.

The following offers a collection of stories that give us an idea of what it means to be Jewish and queer and/or trans through the lived experiences of queer and/or trans Jews living in BC from the early 1900s to today. It weaves the life of a man who emigrated from Eastern Europe in the 1900s with the life of a documentary filmmaker born in Vancouver in the 1970s. It shows the family support and family withdrawal that people interviewed experienced while discovering their gender and sexual identities. It profiles lesbian Passover seders that allowed queer and/or trans women to find Jewish community. The role of the synagogue and Jewish community centres – from weddings to support groups, bake sales and children’s programming – in forming queer and/or trans communities is explored. It documents what might be the first public queer Jewish wedding ordained by a Conservative rabbi in BC, taking place in the early 1990s. By telling these stories, we hope that people are able to imagine and reimagine the past, present and future of a Jewish, queer BC.

The earliest account of gay Jewish life in Vancouver in the “The BC Jewish Queer and Trans Oral History Project” comes from Marsha, who tells the story of her relative Max, known as Uncle Max to many young men in the Vancouver gay community. Marsha has previously written Uncle Max’s story for the journal Counterpoints. His story was also featured in Xtra Magazine and The Queer History Project.

Max’s family emigrated from Antepol, Gorodno District, Belarus, to Vancouver after Max’s father was murdered by a Cossack during a pogrom in their shtetl. The family was sponsored by Marsha’s great-great-grandmother, Sarah. Max was close, yet distanced from his family. His financial success allowed him to sponsor family members’ immigration to Canada.

In 1928, Max opened a shoe store on Granville Street. A man of style, he created beautiful window displays featuring the latest fashion. When young mothers went to buy their baby’s first pair of shoes, Max always gifted the baby’s first pair of shoes for free, and many people never forgot this act of generosity. Max recalled times when people would approach him to tell him he gave them their first pair of shoes when they were babies.

Biological family members, including Marsha’s dad, were both employed in Max’s shoe store, as well as owned their own stores, and the family consulted one another according to their strengths. Max decorated the other shoe store’s windows and knew how to pick women’s shoes. Marsha recalled her dad coming home one day and referring to Max as a fairy. Marsha imagined fairies flying throughout the store.

Max met his partner George when George came into the shoe store, in uniform – he had served in the Air Force during WWII. Max always fell for a man in uniform, but George was special. The couple worked together at the shoe store for 40 years and, together, they made a beautiful home. George cut the lawn, Max dusted the tchotchkes. Their living room served as a safe space and a space of fun and gossip for countless gay men.

Alongside the latest fashions, Max also sourced size 15 heels. Max told Marsha about the drag queens, who would come into his store looking for shoes. While telling the stories, Max would show Marsha his legs and quip that none of the drag queens legs looked as good as his legs looked, especially in his emerald gown.

At the time, men dressing up in women's clothing was illegal. Max told Marsha that policemen pulled him over while he was dressed in drag. Max was scared that he would be arrested - instead, he was able to flirt his way out of the ticket. As the cop left, Max turned to the people in the car and said, “Do you think he liked my emerald green dress?”

Marsha never saw a picture of Max in drag. She never quite knew whether Max was serious or joking about the elaborate dresses in his wardrobe. She saw the wardrobe but never looked inside.

People liked Max. He had an active social life. He had a mysterious European accent and a magnetism that drew in people. Known as Uncle Max in the community, young gay men would come into the shoe store looking for a family. George and Max would feed and house them and many would be hired to work at the store.

George and Max never had children of their own. When Max’s nephew, who was estranged from his parents, died in New York City of AIDS, Max sat shiva as if it had been his own son who had passed away.

Both Max and George were religious. George went to an Anglican church regularly and Max went to an Orthodox synagogue on Shabbat. Both men were flirtatious and social and would pick up gay guys wherever they went. According to Max, there was a nice gay scene at the synagogue. It was easy to flirt with men in the Orthodox synagogue because the men and women were seated separately. Max thought the men were very handsome, praying in their suits and wearing their prayer shawls. The wives seemed to have no idea about the flirting on the men’s side of the separation wall.

In the 1970s and ’80s, a group of men tried to set up a gay minyan in Vancouver, mirroring the gay minyan in San Francisco. The idea of a gay minyan in Vancouver excited Max. However, despite interest from gay Jewish men and their non-Jewish partners, the project fizzled out after the person organizing it was charged with embezzlement. Luckily Max never invested money into the project.

When Max died, he left a large donation to a Jewish “old folks” home, it was the biggest donation the institution had ever received to that point. In addition to the generous donation, Max left a trust to pay for his nephew’s, who “was blind and had other handicaps,” care. After Max died, George sold the house and the collections that Max loved.

Uncle Max lived down the street from Carole and her son Jeff. Jeff knew he was gay at a young age, but did not know anyone who was gay except for Max and George, who he describes as his disconnected neighbours. Max and George were his only example of two men living together in a romantic and monogamous relationship. Jeff has vivid memories of trick or treating at Uncle Max and George’s house on Halloween. He remembers feeling special when Max and George would make a fuss over Jeff's Halloween costume. Jeff was always intrigued by the couple as a child, but at the time did not know why they caught his attention. Jeff would have loved to have been able to go to Max and George for advice.

Jeff was raised in Vancouver and his parents made sure that he and his siblings had strong Jewish roots. The family went to a Conservative synagogue and he and his siblings were part of Jewish youth groups and other Jewish activities. At the time of the interview, Jeff had been living in New York City for more than a decade. A journalist and filmmaker who produces documentaries, his identity as a gay Jewish man has been a subtle undercurrent of his films. Although he has not lived in Vancouver for a long time, he still feels connected to the Vancouver Jewish community, and the community has been very kind and supportive of him and his work.

In New York, Jeff has a diverse group of friends. Living in an exclusively Jewish and/or gay world was never appealing. He attends a gay synagogue in New York City because he feels like he belongs without having to explain. Even in a place like New York City, being openly Jewish in the gay community is hard because of the subtle stereotypes and assumptions that he encounters.

Jeff came out to his friends while attending university in Toronto. The university gave him the chance to meet other gay people, and create a new and separate from his family. It allowed him to feel more free and comfortable to be his authentic self. After Toronto, Jeff lived in New York for a year. Then he moved back to Vancouver and lived in his parent’s house. He felt like he had unfinished business: he needed to come out to his parents. He eventually returned to New York where he lives today.

One morning, after her husband left early in the morning to go skiing, Jeff’s mom, Carole, found a letter from Jeff telling her he is gay. As Carole read the letter, she cried because she knew how hard it must have been for Jeff. She wrote him a note, saying that she loved him, and left it upstairs. The letter had allowed Jeff to say everything he needed to say without being interrupted. He left the letter for his mom because he assumed that his father would have a harder time dealing with him coming out and he wanted his mother to ease his father into the idea of a gay son.

Carole went to work after having read the letter. The family had plans to have Shabbat dinner at a restaurant. Carole ordered a drink which was unusual. Her family assumed she was stressed from work. Only Jeff and Carole knew about the letter. Jeff was nervous to come to the dinner. His mom didn’t bring up the letter at dinner, nevertheless, he was relieved that she knew. A weight had been lifted from his shoulders.

After the restaurant, Jeff went to his sister’s house. Jeff regrets that Carole had to sit with the letter for 24 hours before talking to him, but he needed his space. While Jeff was at his sister’s, Carole showed the letter to his dad. The next night, Jeff and his parents had a long conversation filled with questions, concerns and tears.

The day after this discussion, Carole phoned everyone to tell them that Jeff was gay, and she did so with courage and conviction. She called their rabbi a few days later. Carole held a new identity as a mother of a gay son. She would go places and introduce herself as a mother with a gay son. Just like she always made sure people knew she was Jewish, to prevent people from saying anything antisemitic, she made sure people knew her son was gay, so that no one would say anything homophobic.

After Jeff came out in Vancouver, a relative revealed to their parents that they were gay, but the family kept it a secret from Jeff and Carole. When Carole found out, she was shocked that they had tried to keep it a secret. The family explained that it was easier to accept that another person’s child is gay than it is to accept your own child. In turn, Carole felt a sense of responsibility to open the door for other Jewish families with LGBTQ+ children. Through her synagogue, she founded the group JP Flag, which acted as a space where parents could work through having LGBTQ+ children. Around six mothers, and sometimes fathers, would meet for coffee and “have the best time” talking and sharing their knowledge. The group met once or twice a month for two years.

Jeff says he opened the door for others in his family. Relatives who came out after him were able to look to him as a mentor, and he tries to act as the mentor he wished he had had when he was young.

Alan identifies as a secular gay man. He was raised by an atheist Jewish father and a Presbyterian Scottish mother. His father was born in Poland and escaped Warsaw at 13 years old; he then went from England to Portage La Prairie, Manitoba, to work on a farm. When his father arrived at the farm, however, the farmers did not want to employ a Jewish boy, so his father was forced to do what he needed to do to survive. He lied about his age and joined the Canadian Army. Later in life, he married Alan’s mother and, throughout his career, he went from pumping gas to owning his own auto parts store. Eventually, they settled in Vancouver.

Alan’s father had never wanted children and did not like sharing his wife’s attention with his children. As well, he did not raise his children Jewishly because he saw Judaism as a disadvantage. Alan knew he was gay at five years old, but kept his identity “under water”. From a very young age, he knew the world was not made for people like him.

During Alan’s four-year family therapy graduate program, he was encouraged by his professor and classmates to come out to his parents. Alan had been in a long-term relationship with a man for nine years, but his parents only knew this person as Alan’s roommate. This changed when, at age 32, Alan revealed to his parents, first his mother then his father, that he was gay. His dad was petrified, his mom was in tears. She asked, “What about my grandchildren?”, a response that was echoed by other mothers of people interviewed. His father turned around and faced the window. Instead of casting him off, though, the father turned around and said, “I’m just so worried you’d lost respect for me.” Alan’s father was more scared of hearing that his son did not respect him than hearing he had a gay son. His father surprised him by being neither judgmental nor harsh. Alan’s partner was welcomed into the family. The couple later broke up.

Alan regrets that he waited so long to tell his parents that he was gay. By cloaking himself from his mother and father, they were unable to have an honest relationship for many years. Alan regrets that he shirked the responsibility of being truthful with his family. He has learned how important it is to be ourselves without fear of reprisal.

Making sure that there is queer representation in Jewish space has been a struggle for Alan, the Clinical Director of, and a psychologist at, Jewish Family Services (JFS) Vancouver, who today identifies as a gay Jewish man. Noting that it has been a struggle to get any programs or services running for the queer community, Alan says he changed the intake form at the organization to allow the person applying for assistance the opportunity to identify as part of the LGBTQ+ community. A continuing struggle for JFS is that, despite their efforts to organize Jewish group therapy, people have not felt safe enough to join. Alan, for example, has clients who do not want the Jewish community to know they are gay.

Selina was one of the professionals approached by Carole’s parent support group. In the early 2000s, Selina was the Director of Counselling Services at JFS (then, Jewish Family Services Agency). The parents were worried that their adult children did not feel connected to the Jewish community in Vancouver.

Although Selina knew Jewish gay and lesbian people in her personal and professional life, she realized that the LGBTQ+ community was not represented in a visible way on Jewish boards. After a few meetings with the parent group and others, Selina realized that many queer adult children feel too alienated from the Jewish community to be affected by JFS’ work. She shifted her focus from trying to support the adult child to supporting the parents of LGBTQ+ people, giving them the tools to support their children in a Jewish way. Selina credits Jewish mothers of LGBTQ+ children, who had strong connections in the Jewish community, for moving things forward.

Selina’s first child came out to her as he was preparing to leave for college. She was surprised that her popular, well-liked son had waited so long to come out as gay. When he told her, she was gripped with fear. Selina knew the dangers of the world. She had prepared her children to live in a world with antisemitism, but she had not prepared her children to face the world of homophobia. She felt like she had failed her son.

As her son prepared to leave for college, Selina wished she had created an intentionally queer space in her home like she had created an intentionally Jewish space. She phoned a gay friend to ask him what she should do. He replied:

Mama, just love them. This is not your piece to teach him. There’s us older folk around that will help teach him about how to navigate the world as a gay man. You cannot help your kid, you’re a straight cis woman.

While it had been Selina’s job to instill Jewish values in her children, she would need to rely on the queer elders to show to her son how to navigate his queer identity.

At the time of interview, Selina was a minister in the provincial government. She speaks with emotion as she recounts the first Shabbat Dinner with Pride Colours she attended with her son, organized by Carmel. She attended the Shabbat as a Jew and a proud mom, and she was asked to speak on behalf of the government as an elected official. It was a space where her identities converged and were holistically and meaningfully represented. She was proud that her son wanted her to be with him at the community event. In the room, she saw old and young queer people, with their parents and allies. She saw a community saying there is space for her son, and the other queer people in the room. Selina thought of the group of parents that Carole had brought together in the early 2000s – they had laid the groundwork that helped create this vibrant community-wide Pride Shabbat.

Most people interviewed for the project discovered their sexuality in the 1970s and ‘80s. The following section looks at the stories of people coming out to themselves and their biological families 20 to 30 years before Jeff and Selina’s son came out to their families. These personal accounts represent the stories of the average age of people interviewed for the project. Some of the men and women interviewed were married to people of the opposite sex before experiencing a seminal event that allowed them to realize that love with someone of the same sex was possible.

Numerous women interviewed said that when they were growing up in the 1950s and ’60s, they could not imagine the possibility of living with another woman. Until they discovered feminism, they could not imagine how a woman’s life would look like or how she would be able to survive without having a man as financial support. Feminist circles and feminist ideology allowed these women to imagine the possibility of living their lives as an open lesbian.

There were people interviewed who described lovely relationships with people of the opposite sex that resulted in having children. In these relationships, however, there was something missing. One interviewee recounts gagging as she walked down the aisle to marry the “nice Jewish boy” she describes as a dork and stupid. Others recount marrying a person because they could not imagine how a woman could “survive in the world without a man”. Trips abroad, friend groups, colleagues, and feminist circles empowered them to challenge their perception of what it looked like to be in passionate romantic love.

Marsha spent her weekends and summers with Zionist youth movements from the time she was 5 until her mid-20s. Her main group of friends were the Jewish kids she met in the movement. Outside of this movement, Marsha met and married a Japanese man when she was in her early 20s. They lived in Israel initially and it was in Israel that a woman first came onto Marsha but it did not go anywhere. Marsha knew she had feelings for women but it was not until she made love with a woman later in life that it clicked that she was a lesbian.

Both abroad and in Vancouver, where they returned after living in Israel for six months, the couple experienced racism and disbelief that a white Jewish woman would marry a Japanese man. In Vancouver, they were unable to rent a house because no one would rent their unit to a Japanese man, so Marsha and her husband bought a house together. They were married for 10 years until she came out in the 1970s and, when they split up, they sold the house. With her share of the money from the sale, Marsha bought the house she would live in until recently. Marsha said that, overall, she has experienced more racism than antisemitism.

Marsha obtained a master’s in social work and had a meaningful, dynamic career. She taught a self-defence course for women who had been abused – mostly heterosexual, but some lesbian and trans – where people were able to open up and get support for their trauma. The group brought awareness to issues that were often kept secret, but it also provided the women with a place to have fun. Since retiring, Marsha has been involved in Quirk-e, a group that meets weekly to do performances and sometimes publishes pieces. Quirk-e is where she first wrote the story about her Uncle Max.

Marsha has been with her partner, who lives in Roberts Creek, since 2002 or 2003. Marsha wanted to get married, but her partner had experienced a terrible divorce and was not interested in remarrying. Marsha feels very lucky to have been born in Vancouver at the right time in history. She has been able to come out, be a lesbian, and be herself. Marsha has dozens of gay and lesbian friends who live pretty free, happy lives; she is surrounded by a supportive, wonderful community.

As a teenager, Debby was suicidal. She was envious of other women’s bodies and saw other women as beautiful, yet herself as ugly. She believes that the envy that she felt was her culturally appropriate way of feeling same sex desire. Even as a child growing up in Los Angeles in the 1950s and ’60s in a progressive neighbourhood, where the modernity of the architecture symbolized the type of liberal people who chose to live in the neighbourhood, she did not and could not understand that it was acceptable for a woman to desire another woman.

Debby married in 1965 because that was the norm at the time. She and her husband, who she describes as wonderful, had a baby in France and eventually they ended up in England. There, Debby discovered the women's liberation movement.

Debby raised her son, who was born in Paris and raised in London, at a time where she was very involved in radical feminism, which also influenced her views on religion. Consequently, she and her husband did not raise their son doing anything particularly Jewish, even after the family moved to Victoria.

Debby and her husband were divorced in 1986. They had committed to living together until their son went to university. It was not a traditional marriage but it worked. Their son lives with his partner of 20 years and the couple has a daughter. Their son’s partner is the main breadwinner, while their son is the main household person. Debby feels like she has done a good job as a parent.

The women’s liberation movement allowed Debby to discover her sexuality. In London, lesbianism became normative in her social circles: why would you fuck the enemy? In London, being a lesbian felt possible, but her sexual relations with women were mostly recreational until she fell madly in love with a woman in Victoria. Falling in love with her partner Donna fed her heart and soul in a way that never happened with her husband. Debby can no longer fathom having a relationship with a man.

Donna and Debby met in 1981 at Every Woman’s Books feminist bookstore in Victoria. They lived together for 24 years, until Donna passed away from ALS. They lived a life that neither woman had thought possible. They never felt hostility from their neighbours, no one threw a brick through their window or otherwise harassed them; they held hands in the street without being heckled. Debby felt Donna’s family was lovely to Debby. When they would visit Debby’s parents, they could sleep in the same bed and, when Debby’s mother would come to visit, there was no need to de-dyke the house – as long as the “L” word was never mentioned. Each week, they lit the Shabbat candles together to celebrate making it through another work week.

When Donna died, the Government of Canada acknowledged their relationship. Debby received a document that the government was sorry for her loss and that she was eligible for the federal death benefit. Such acknowledgements were a relatively new thing in Canada and they came as a welcome surprise. Debby never thought this type of recognition would be possible.

While Debby never thought about lighting yahrzeit candles for her parents, Debby has lit a candle for Donna every year.

Bayla was born with the name Barbara. She was raised in a Conservative Jewish home in Montreal and describes herself as strongly Jewish but non-traditional. At the time of her interview, she was living in Mount Shasta, California, and she spoke about bringing her tarot cards down to the river to sit on the land and be in nature as she performed her own Yom Kippur service. She spoke about how the restrictions of COVID and social distancing had brought her family together. By shifting family visits from in person to on an online platform, family members from all over were able to gather and reminisce while bringing in Shabbat.

Bayla knew she was a lesbian when she married her husband, but it could not be acknowledged. She first verbalized that she might be a lesbian during a Rosh Chodesh gathering for Jewish lesbians in 1980. (Rosh Chodesh is the beginning of a new Jewish month, marked by the beginning of a new moon. It is traditionally a women’s festival.) Shortly after the gathering, she made love to a woman for the first time. She realized that all of the people she was surrounding herself with were lesbians, and began a gradual process of awakening to her own sexuality.

Bayla became a member of a group of lesbians who met for Rosh Chodesh. The group helped her affirm her lesbian identity. As well, members related as radical feminists who were angry about the inequality that Jewish women faced in the Jewish community, and that gay and lesbians were marginalized. She changed her name from Barbara to Bayla and made other radical life changes. Immersed in a lesbian world, she became a new person, separating herself from the world she was raised in so that she could discover her true intellectual and emotional self.

Bayla knew she had to tell her parents that she was a lesbian and wanted to tell them in person. The experience was painful for her parents. She returned home as a completely different person. Her father screamed at her; it took a long time for her mother to speak to her again. They no longer knew how to talk to their daughter. Her parents did not know how to ask about her life. It took them years to call her Bayla instead of Barbara even though they had given her the Hebrew name Bayla.

Bayla’s parents handled their daughter’s new identity the best they could. Neither Bayla nor her parents had LGBTQ+ role models who were living openly queer lives. Just as it was a process for Bayla to discover herself as a lesbian, it was a process for her parents to accept their daughter as Bayla.

For many of the people interviewed, Passover was a liberating medium that allowed them to celebrate their Judaism alongside their community of women, and represents the intersection between their Jewishness and lesbianism. The women gathered to free themselves from personal and collective bondage. Together, they worked on making the world a better place.

After traveling around with her husband for a year, Bayla left him and moved to Vancouver in 1982. She spent 17 years in Vancouver and Victoria, and was very involved in the lesbian and Jewish lesbian communities, including founding her own group. Bayla organized women’s seders in Vancouver for many years. Because she was working at the University of British Columbia, she had access to a large gym. They hosted 40 to 60 people each year, and Bayla describes these seders as very healing.

The feminist seders of the 1990s addressed male dominance at the seder table by taking back women’s power and acknowledging the role of women. The seders were healing and joyful, with women taking their place at the head of the table as part of a collective of strong women. These women had watched their strong mothers cook for days with little acknowledgement, while the men led the seder at the head of the table. The feminist seders gave women the authority that had previously belonged solely to men.

The feminist seders gave Aaron, who will be introduced in more detail in the following section, a meaningful connection to the Jewish community. As a child, Aaron went to a synagogue where the men and women had to sit separately, and the men held the power. There was not a significant place for Aaron in that version of Judaism.

Like Aaron, Ruth—of blessed memory—attended family Passover seders, where the men would sit around the table talking about the male characters, such as Moses, and she didn’t feel connected to her own history. As a result of her experiences, Ruth wrote her own Haggadah entitled Like an Orange on a Seder Plate, where Miriam, Devorah and all of the other women who were pivotal in the story of Passover, but forgotten in the traditional Haggadah, took their rightful place.

When Lauren and Michelle moved to Victoria from California, they were told about the lesbian seders, which were somewhat exclusive because they were hosted in people’s homes to create an intimate, heimish atmosphere. There was a spot for Lauren and Michelle at the Passover table only because another couple had recently moved back to California. Lauren and Michelle were able to skip the waitlist by exaggerating the size of their living room and offering to host the seder. This seder was where the idea of The Klezbians, discussed in more detail in a different part of the exhibit, was formed.

Jewish feminism is what brought Debby back to Judaism. In 1970-something in London, England, Debby met a group of Jewish feminist writers. Together, they made a Passover seder. Whoever wanted to come could come as long as they were a woman. The Spanish anarchist Orelena Castillo brought balloons to the seder which, at the time, seemed absurd to Debby. On the one hand, balloons are not generally brought to seders; on the other hand, why not?

In the 1980s, Dorothy moved to Vancouver, where she connected with other Jewish lesbians who became her support group. Dorothy had a difficult relationship with Judaism. She was raised by atheist parents in the Czech Republic. Her parents identified as Czech until Hitler’s race laws forced them to identify as Jews. After they survived the Holocaust, Dorothy’s parents rejected the biological ties to Judaism that had caused them to be persecuted under Nazi rule. Dorothy only found out that she was Jewish in her adult life, and is the only one of her siblings who chooses to call herself a Jew. For her, turning her back on Judaism would mean betraying the victims of the Holocaust.

At time of interview, Dorothy lives an hour outside of Victoria and loves celebrating Rosh Hashanah and Passover seders with her community in Victoria. But coming out as a lesbian was easier for Dorothy than embracing her Jewish identity and it was the Jewish lesbian support group she found in Vancouver that allowed her to grapple with Judaism. When Dorothy went to her first feminist seder, it was the first ritual of Jewish life that she had experienced. While some of her lesbian friends guided her through her discovery of her Jewish identity, some challenged her for aligning herself with a patriarchal Jewish identity. This challenge allowed her to explore her beliefs more fully and become more confident.

Susan reconnected with her Judaism when she came out as a lesbian. At the Every Woman’s Books Collective, she was invited to join the Jewish women’s feminist group. She was subsequently invited by Jews she met at various feminist groups to attend Passover seders and Rosh Hashanah dinners. She slowly started celebrating the Jewish holidays at people’s homes. She felt the weight of the work of being Jewish in a Christian world lifted from her shoulders. She started to feel like she wanted to explore more of the Jewish side of herself.

Lisa, a gay, Jewish, fluid woman, was born in 1950 in Houston, Texas, to parents who were from Vancouver. Lisa’s relationship with her family was difficult before she came out because Lisa never fit into their mold of how a person should act. Her biological family could not understand why she would not want to have a long-term relationship with a man, get married and have children. They did not understand why Lisa could not be a “proper” Jewish daughter, which for them meant going to religious school, having Jewish friends, wearing makeup, a dress and pantyhose to Shabbat dinner, and visiting Israel. Lisa followed most of her parents’ rules and kept most of her opinions to herself until she moved out of their home.

Lisa now lives a life of radical inclusivity. She is wary of any group that created insiders and outsiders. When she moved to Israel in her 20s, she saw Jews, Christians, Muslims and Druze living together. There, she discovered that Israel is a Jewish country in which most Jewish people don’t follow Jewish ritual. She blended in with the short, dark, hairy men who spoke loudly with their hands. She finally understood her bloodline. After becoming pregnant and having an illegal abortion, Lisa returned to the United States. It was then, at age 25, that she came out as a gay woman.

Lisa’s mother and sister hated that she was a gay woman. When her mother found out, she was speechless and horrified. One night, Lisa locked herself in the bathroom to keep herself safe from her mother, who was having one of her fits. Lisa’s sister, despite having many gay friends, could not accept having a gay sister.

Lisa’s father, who was divorced from her mother, could relate that he and Lisa both found women beautiful. He was concerned, however, that she would need a husband to take care of her, mow the grass and manage her finances. In the late 1970s, it was common opinion in Lisa’s world that, unless you were living in San Francisco, a woman needed a traditional, heterosexual relationship for stability. This was the first time she had ever seen the protective side of her father. She also realized that she needed to learn to accept herself as a gay woman and let go of internalized stereotypes.

At 60 years old, Lisa retired in Victoria to be close to her Canadian family. Before moving to Canada, Lisa had had nothing to do with the Jewish community. In Victoria, she is part of the klezmer band The Klezbians and she attends a Conservative synagogue with a rabbi she describes as: “an absolute doll ... great person, as well as a wonderful rabbi, role model.”

Born in New York City, Aaron settled in Victoria in 1989. He identifies as a Jewish trans man and, while he grew up practising Conservative Judaism, he now follows Reform Judaism and his wife is a rabbi in the Reform movement. In his interview, Aaron recounts two important lessons from his father, who died before Aaron came out. Aaron’s father, a mechanic, taught Aaron not to be afraid of what is broken – if something is broken, you should try and fix it. The second lesson was that Aaron should understand a lot about Judaism and Jewish history, as many of the people he would encounter during his life would ask him what it means to be a Jew, and it was important that Aaron be able to answer those questions.

While Aaron’s father was quiet, his mother was a talker, sociable, and interested in fitting in. She was concerned about what other people thought and changed her opinion accordingly. Aaron’s position at the University of Victoria, where he has been the Chair in Transgender Studies since 2016, made his mother proud. However, Aaron’s research – in sex, gender and transgender studies – was embarrassing for his mother when she had to explain to others what Aaron studied. At certain times, Aaron’s job caused some friction between Aaron and his mother, but Aaron describes their relationship as smooth in general.

Aaron identified as a lesbian during his mother’s life. They lived with an understanding of “Don’t ask, don’t tell, do what you have to do, you are my kid, but don’t talk about it in front of anyone else.” His mother accepted the partners that Aaron brought home based on how well they treated Aaron. Some partners were nicer than others.

Aaron started thinking about his trans identity while his mother was still alive, however, at the time, his mother was sick and Aaron did not want to turn her life around at that point. He reflects that his mom would have eventually accepted his transition over time, once she saw that others accepted it. Aaron suspects that his mother might have had an idea of his trans identity, though, as she always treated him like her little prince.

Aaron walked away from Judaism when he was young. Nevertheless, it was important to Aaron that he had Jewish friends, as he shares a certain worldview with fellow Jews. At one point, he was involved in a discussion group about Jewish politics in the world. Aaron did not participate in a formal Jewish community until the 1990s, when his partner took Aaron to synagogue.

Aaron had not been in a synagogue in 25 to 30 years and he only reluctantly went with his partner. As a visibly lesbian couple, and with him as a butch-presenting person, Aaron was nervous that the congregation would treat them poorly. To his surprise, they were immediately welcomed by an important person in the synagogue. They were even asked if they wanted to have the honour of an Aliyah (be called to the Torah). The couple had walked into a synagogue with a beautiful energy, where they were embraced for who they were, and, as a result, they became involved in the synagogue.

In 1992, Aaron and his partner decided to get married. They approached the rabbi at the Conservative synagogue to officiate their wedding, which they wanted to have in their home. The rabbi did not know how to say yes, yet could not say no. At the time, the law committee of the Conservative movement was debating same-sex marriages and had not made a decision. There was a window in which it was possible for an individual rabbi in the movement to perform a same-sex marriage as such a union was not deemed legal or illegal. As of yet, no Conservative rabbi had performed a same-sex marriage. However, a week before Aaron’s wedding, a Conservative rabbi in New York performed a Jewish same-sex marriage ceremony under these circumstances, but then the situation changed.

The same-sex marriage in New York City took place on a Sunday. The following Thursday, days before Aaron’s wedding would take place, the Conservative movement’s law committee decided that Conservative rabbis would not be allowed to perform same-sex marriages. Out of respect for Aaron and his partner, however, their rabbi did not tell them that the ruling had been made, as he did not want to embarrass them by refusing to perform the ceremony so close to their ceremony date. The rabbi married the couple at their home using the Conservative movement’s Jewish wedding ceremony, less the kiddushin portion. After Aaron’s wedding, to his knowledge, the Conservative movement did not perform another same-sex wedding for a decade. For many Conservative synagogues, kiddushin – the part of the marriage ceremony that makes it holy – continues to be reserved for heterosexual couples.

Aaron and his wife left for their honeymoon the day after their wedding. There were no smartphones and no internet to disturb the couple while they were away. When they resurfaced, they found out that the “shit had hit the fan.” The couple had been completely unaware that their wedding had caused controversy within the congregation.

Most people in the congregation were thrilled by the wedding. There were a few people, however, who were outraged that the rabbi had performed a same-sex marriage after the movement’s decision was made. The dissenters explained to the newlyweds that they were not angry at them, rather, they were angry at the rabbi and wanted him removed from his position.

Aaron’s friends stepped in for the couple, telling the newlyweds to stand back and let them fight on their behalf. They defended the couple and the rabbi. The people who voted that the rabbi was wrong to perform the wedding ceremony left the Conservative synagogue and started an Orthodox congregation, which lasted for a number of years.

In 2000, Aaron was installed as the president of the synagogue. To his knowledge, he was the first out LGBTQ+ president of a Conservative synagogue. Although he was given this position, Aaron learned the limits of power as a LGBTQ-identifying person when he tried to discreetly expose the past wrongdoings of a well-respected congregant. People were outraged and a monkey trial was held against Aaron, trying to impeach him. They did not succeed in getting two-thirds of the vote. The same people who told Aaron and his partner to stand back after their wedding once again stood up for Aaron. It was an ugly moment, where Aaron was reminded of his place in the synagogue – he was given permission to be president but, as a lesbian (this was before his transition), he still needed to know his place at the table. The person accused of wrongdoing was later exposed by a future president, who exposed documents that Aaron had known about but was not willing to share publicly.

In 2002, when Aaron transitioned, his wife suggested that he mark the occasion with some sort of religious or spiritual ceremony. At first, Aaron resisted the idea, but he changed his mind. The rabbi and the Jewish community gathered at a bridge on Beacon Hill. There were around 20 people on each side of the bridge, with people across the queer alphabet soup represented. There were people of all ages, including a woman in her 80s who had known Aaron’s mother. People from throughout Aaron’s life were there, friends he had grown up with, people who he worked with at the university, and people who represented all parts of his life.

Aaron started on the women’s side of the bridge. Important women in his life were asked to do their own version of the Sheva Brachos – seven women came forward and gave Aaron their blessings; the oldest person spoke about his mother. Aaron’s wife then brought him to the middle of the bridge, where the rabbi stood with a scroll and a shofar. The rabbi blew the shofar and proclaimed Aaron’s Hebrew name. The rabbi walked Aaron over the bridge to the group of men, who joined in a circle and sang “Hinei Matov”: How good it is to sit here with brothers together. On the men’s side, the elders gave Aaron a bag of things he would need to be a man, including WD40, duct tape and a pocket knife. Aaron looks back on the gift with humour. People told Aaron that his transition ceremony gave them the courage to deal with difficult things in their own lives.

Once Aaron transitioned, the rabbi married Aaron and his wife with a service that included the kiddushin ceremony. The wedding took place in the synagogue with a couple hundred people in attendance. This might have been the Conservative movement’s first wedding for an openly trans man.

Aaron continues to serve in the Jewish community. Of note, he was on the Hillel BC board for 10 years. From 2013 to 2016, Aaron was the president of the Jewish Federation of Victoria and Vancouver Island, during which time he mentored then Victoria resident Carmel. At the time of interview, he is standing as past-president of the Jewish Federation of Victoria and Vancouver Island.

Hope has never been oppressed by the Jewish community. She has never been given a hard time at synagogue or been called names in a Jewish setting. She was lucky to have always lived in liberal environments during a time when queer rights was at the forefront of people’s consciousness. She feels that, when pushed, Reform Judaism took a strong stand in favour of queer rights relatively early. Nevertheless, Hope feels alienated from the Jewish community. She grew up in a world that conditioned her to know that she, as a queer person, would not be accepted. In her youth, Hope thought she might become a rabbi. One of the reasons she never pursued that path was because she imagined that the first two questions in the rabbinical school application would be: Do you believe in God, and Are you straight? She could not say yes to either question.

When she was coming out in the 1980s, Hope was sure that being dead would be better than being queer. When she came out to her liberal mother, her mother threw up, asked about the grandchildren that she assumed Hope would now not be able to give her, and told Hope not to tell anyone. The next day, her mother told her sister, who told her grandmother. Hope’s grandmother was relieved that now Hope would not have to deal with men. A few days later, Hope’s mom phoned to let her know her Reform rabbi would marry anyone as long as they were both Jewish.

Hope felt alienated by virtue of what she had been raised believing and the time in which she was raised. When she attended the march in Washington, D.C., that commemorated the 50th anniversary of the Stonewall Riots, she stood with what she estimates to be almost 100,000 people to hear a Unitarian pastor speak. The pastor said, “your parents may have a problem with you, your synagogue or church may have a problem with you, but God doesn’t have a problem with you.” Hope burst into tears. She had never understood the weight of what she was carrying or how ingrained her need for affirmation was until the pastor said those words. She looked around. Everyone was crying. It was like the pastor had freed everyone in the crowd.

Hope and her wife moved to Vancouver from Seattle for her wife’s medical career. They are currently raising two young children in a secular Jewish environment. Her wife – who is an atheist from a large Eastern European Catholic family – says it smells like a holiday when Hope puts the chicken soup on for Passover. Hope’s father used to say the same thing. Although Hope has experienced some micro-aggressions, she finds Canada’s attitude towards queers to be a lot more “chill” than her experiences in the United States.

Hope and her wife’s children attended the Jewish preschool at the Vancouver Jewish Community Centre (JCC). According to Hope, hers is the only queer family to date that has sent their children to the preschool. To her, this is odd. She knows of other queer Jewish families with “gaybies” who are reluctant to send their kids to the JCC. Yet she has always felt welcomed by the staff, children and parents at the preschool. On Mother’s Day, for example, the teachers made sure that her children made two of each thing they were making, so both mothers would be acknowledged.

With laughter, Hope tells of an encounter with one of the children at the preschool. Every day, the child would run up to Hope as she arrived for drop off. Every day, the child would ask: “Is it true that Asher has two moms and no dad?” Hope always told the girl that her son had two moms and, every day, the girl would respond with “wow” and walk away. Hope is proud that her presence at the JCC has exposed her sons’ classmates to the possibilities of queerness at such a young age.

Hope wonders what happened to young queer people in the Vancouver Jewish community that makes them reluctant to send their kids to Jewish schools. She thinks that queer Jewish people in the 30-to-45-age demographic have run away from their Jewish community with their “hair on fire,” that they feel disenfranchised, and are so sure that they will be rejected, they are unwilling to come within 20 feet of a Jewish building. She feels like they must have either run out or perceive that they have been run out of the community.

Young queer people need someone to say it’s okay to come back into a community from which they feel alienated, says Hope. Someone needs to physically reach out their hand to bring people into the building, like the pastor who told her on the Hill that she was accepted by God. Hope, who works at the JCC, is on a mission to bring them back with queer-directed planning at the centre.

There are queer people who are scared to use Jewish services because they do not feel like it is a safe space. Alan, a therapist, has created a booth for JFS at the Vancouver Pride Parade to let young queer people know they are welcome to use the services at the organization. He has invited colleagues to come to the Pride booth on Sunset Beach to let people know that they are here, the services they provide, and how they can help people in the community. In the 12 years he has run the booth, only one person has consistently helped. While the booth has increased the amount of queer people using the organization’s services, there are people who are still concerned that they will not be welcomed in Jewish spaces as a queer person. Alan reflects that change is often slow, but that many changes have happened in a relatively short amount of time. He is optimistic that change will continue to happen in JFS.

Pat is a journalist for several publications and a writer and member of the editorial board at the Jewish Independent newspaper. He has worked with many Jewish organizations over the years. As a non-Jewish gay man, his first encounter with the Jewish community was as a student at McGill University, where he was involved in the student group Gays and Lesbians of McGill. Gays and Lesbians of McGill’s acronym was GALOM which, Pat quips, sounds very much like the Jewish monster golem. GALOM took part in Hillel McGill’s project called Students Taking Action to Network Against Discrimination (STAND). Pat was the GALOM representative for Hillel’s STAND and his experience with Hillel motivated him to take courses in Jewish studies.

Pat has experienced the Jewish community as welcoming to gays. Over the 25 years he has worked at the Jewish Independent, he and the paper have documented LGBTQ+ progress. A Jewish Renewal congregation in Vancouver participated in the Pride Parade in 1996 and 1997. According to Pat, this was the first time a Jewish synagogue participated in the parade. After that, the Jewish community did not have another official representative in the parade until 2010. The Jewish Independent (then called the Jewish Western Bulletin) published pictures of the congregation participating in the 1996 and 1997 parades, and the latter coverage resulted in one letter criticizing the parade as immodest and another letter noting that a local group called Kehillah had walked in the parade and had a booth on Sunset Beach since 1995.

Sometime after the Pride Parade was featured in the newspaper, a person called and asked if their wedding announcement could be printed. Pat responded that, of course, they would publish the announcement, and asked why the person was hesitant to ask. The person revealed they were an interfaith couple and that, in its history, the newspaper had not printed interfaith marriage announcements. After this one was printed, a few people canceled their subscriptions, however, there was no mass loss of readers. This period represented an opening in what the paper published and, when Pat wrote a story about two women who were getting married by a rabbi in a synagogue, but were facing issues with immigration, the article did not receive the same backlash as the interfaith wedding announcement. Today, the Jewish Independent never hesitates to do a story on LGBTQ+ topics and no longer gets negative feedback when LGBTQ+ content is published.

From 2006 to 2012, Pat was the director of development and communications at Hillel BC. Hillel, as an international organization, has implemented explicitly inclusive policies for their LGBTQ+ students and employees. At one conference, Hillel announced that spousal benefits also applied to queer couples. Pat was amazed to see two-thirds of the audience stand up and applaud with approval.

In 2010, with the financial support of the Jewish community, Hillel BC had an entry in the Pride Parade and a couple of rabbis joined Hillel in the parade. The delegation waved Canadian and Israeli flags. Pat notes that, while the executive director of Hillel was a strong ally of the LGBTQ+ community, participating in the Pride Parade was also a response to an anti-Israel university group having an entry and Hillel was accused of only participating in the parade in response to that group.

Pat remembers the response from the Jewish community, and thousands in the crowd, as enthusiastic. The organizers of the Jewish entry underestimated how many Jewish people would be at the parade and how much educational and other material they would need to hand out. Jonathan, introduced below, estimates that 100 people showed up to support the Jewish entry in the parade that year and he believes that Hillel’s executive director’s enthusiasm and his own presence as an openly gay employee ensured the vibrancy of the event over the years. In Jonathan’s opinion, since the executive director and he left Hillel, the overall Jewish presence in the Pride Parade has been less vibrant. Hillel ran the delegation for a few years until the Jewish Federation of Greater Vancouver took over and Hillel marched under their umbrella. Over the years, sometimes there was a Jewish delegation that marched in the parade, sometimes a delegation just staffed a booth; other times, they both marched and ran a booth. Almost every major Jewish organization has had representatives at Pride, advocating for queer rights in the Jewish community.

Carmel remembers Hillel’s participation in the 2010 Pride Parade as a wonderful experience. She recounts being with friends, walking in front of the vehicle and hearing shouts from the audience proclaiming: “I’m Jewish and I’m gay! Good to see you!” She heard “Fuck Israel!” from the crowd once but, in her memory, it was drowned out by a sea of love and acceptance. There are circumstances when Carmel chooses whether or not to disclose her personal identity as a Jew or her sexual orientation. In the past, there have been times where she has either hidden her Jewish identity or her queer identity. Her position as the founder of a Jewish LGBTQ+ non-profit has made her a lot more open about her identities.

Marching at the Hillel Pride Parade was not the first time Carmel had felt supported by the Vancouver Jewish community. On August 1, 2009, there was a shooting at the LGBTQ+ youth centre Bar Noar in Tel Aviv, Israel, and people were killed. One of the people who lost their life was Carmel’s cousin, Nir Katz. Hillel BC, with support from local rabbis, held a vigil for the queer Jewish community at the Vancouver Art Gallery. People gathered to mourn, grieve, express anger, and heal. This experience was deeply personal and meaningful for Carmel. She will always remember how her Jewish community paid tribute to her cousin and the others lost and injured in the shooting, so she was not alone in her mourning. Carmel founded JQT Vancouver in Nir’s memory.

A JQT survey in 2018 shows that it is easier to come out as queer in the Jewish community than it is to be Jewish in the queer community. One explanation given is the perception that the queer community sees people who identify with a religious structure as people who are supporting a patriarchal structure that treats women poorly. Another reason people cite for not wanting to reveal a Jewish identity and/or affiliation is the queer community’s perceived relationship to Israel.

Lauren has always worked in an office that employed mostly gay people. In her queer workspace, she was openly queer and closeted as a Jewish person. Lauren felt like she was a minority in queer settings, a feeling that was magnified when the office celebrated Christmas as normative rather than as a religious event.

For Glen, the Israel issue affects his comfort in the gay community. When he tells a date that he is Jewish, the topic of Israel and Palestine is often brought up, as if he is an expert.

Jonathan feels like, if you are Jewish, you are held to a different standard, almost as if you are responsible for everything Israel says or does and you are automatically made into a spokesperson.

Jonathan was the first openly gay president of his Jewish fraternity, in which he was most active from 2007 to 2010. Jonathan never really had to come out to his fraternity brothers. In his words:

I didn’t really come out to them, I just stated, ‘Oh, here’s my boyfriend,’ or something like that, you know, just continued to be who I am. And it was a great experience…. Everyone was very welcoming… I found out that there were a lot of gay, bi, trans members of the fraternity throughout the world.

Jonathan was one of the founders of the LGBTQ+ offshoot of his fraternity. It is an active online group that meets at conventions. He remains friends with a lot of the people in the fraternity.

Jonathan was active in Hillel BC throughout his undergraduate degree and, after he graduated, he was hired to work there. In 2013, Hillel BC went through leadership changes. One consequence of these changes was a lack of leadership in organizing Jewish representation at the Pride Parade. Jewish organizations still participated, but each organization would do so independently. Jonathan emailed people stating the Jewish community needed a plan to ensure the representation of the Jewish community at queer events and the representation of queer people at Jewish events. He was invited by a rabbi to have a meeting with other Jewish organizations. At the meeting, it was decided that the Jewish community should financially support a queer and Jewish organization. The group would be led by members of the queer community and their allies.

They named the group Yad b’Yad, Hebrew for hand in hand, to represent queer and Jewish communities standing hand in hand. Membership in the group required a person to be Jewish, married to a Jew, and/or a Jewish ally. Jonathan was voted to chair the group and the Centre for Israel and Jewish Affairs (CIJA), as the advocacy arm of the Jewish Federation, was designated as the primary funder of Yad b’Yad. The first thing the group planned was a community presence at the Pride Parade. Yad b’Yad also hosted social events such as a pub night, a meeting at a restaurant, and online events.

Yad b’Yad created a document, similar to a constitution, which defined the group. Yad b’Yad would advocate for LGBTQ+ people in the Jewish community and for Jewish people in the LGBTQ+ community. They would be open to anyone of any belief, faith, or ideology, provided that the person is not bigoted towards the Jewish or LGBTQ+ communities. One did not have to be gay to join but they needed to be an ally.

As well, Yad b’Yad’s mission affirmed the group’s belief in the right for Israel to exist in safety, peace and harmony. They were not an Israeli advocacy group, but they wanted to make their stance on Israel and Palestine clear. The language they used echoed the language of the Canadian government. They believed in a two-state solution and in the safety and self-determination of the Israeli and Palestinian people.

Jonathan says that Yad b’Yad was very well received in the Jewish community. Every Jewish organization wanted to show up and support the queer alliance. He remembers that the queer community’s reception of the group was not as warm. Jonathan says that he has always felt accepted for being gay in the Jewish community, however, he has not always been accepted for being Jewish in the queer community. He thinks that some of the hesitancy for acceptance of his Jewish identity has to do with a general distrust of religion based on religious groups’ historical and contemporary treatment of queer people. He thinks there is a feeling in the queer community that subscribing to a religion shows a lack of intelligence. He adds that tension is created by antisemitism and a perceived pinkwashing of Israel. Pinkwashing, in this context, suggests that Israel’s positive treatment of its LGBTQ+ community is only to distract from their negative treatment of Palestinians in Israel and the Occupied Territories.

Jonathan wanted to make an announcement to the Jewish and queer communities that queer Jews existed. He wanted queer Jews who never felt like they belonged to any Jewish community group to see Yad b’Yad as an opportunity to rejoin the Jewish community with a sense of belonging.

Yad b’Yad created a Facebook page and a website so people could join under an alias to protect them from outing themselves to the Jewish or queer communities. To reach these outer circles and entice the people in them to visit the group’s website, advertisements were placed in the three biggest queer publications they could think of: Vancouver Pride Guide, Xtra, and the Vancouver Queer Film Festival Program.

The leaders of the group worked with a graphic designer to create a logo that would give an automatic visual cue that the group was queer and Jewish. The image had the Pride flag (to represent the queer community) and a flag with a blue Magen David (a traditional Jewish symbol) hand in hand. Although the Israeli flag and the Yad b’Yad image feature a blue Magen David, the image was intended to represent the Jewish community, not to express a stance on Israel.

The advertisement in which the image was used described Yad b’Yad’s mission and called for Jewish and queer allies to join the group. The tone was lighthearted and all of the publications accepted and ran the advertisement.

The Vancouver Queer Film Festival (VQFF), as well as their parent organization, began to get complaints regarding Yad b’Yad’s advertisement. The complainants accused Yad b’Yad of pinkwashing Israel and some accused the group of being secret Israeli agents and funneling Israeli money into Canada. People told the VQFF that they should not run Yad b’Yad’s ad or accept their money, even though there was no mention of Israel, Palestine, or Zionism in the advertisement. Jonathan tried to explain to the film festival about pinkwashing by paralleling it to people who claim there is a gay agenda. Jonathan came out when Parliament was debating same-sex marriage. Jonathan would turn on the TV and watch people say “All the gay people care about is the gay agenda.” Jonathan theorized that like in pinkwashing, the gay agenda makes people forget about the bad things that gay people do by concentrating on their accomplishments. Both the gay agenda and Israel agenda relies on conspiratorial stereotypes.

According to Pat, the pinkwashing motif is inherently based on antisemitic tropes such as duplicity and manipulation. He defines pinkwashing as a belief that implies that the people of Israel are so cynical and manipulative that they would implement equal rights for LGBTQ+ people not based on humanity and a commitment to equality, but as a method to draw attention away from how Israel is treating Palestinians. Pat believes that such antisemitic, anti-Israel tropes have no place in progressive movements like the LGBTQ+ movement and are antithetical to what the movement claims to represent.

In response to the accusations against Yad b’Yad’s advertisement, VQFF launched a committee with different groups represented to decide the next steps to take. People from the Boycott, Divestment and Sanction Israel (BDS) movement were invited to join the committee, while Jewish representatives were not. Jonathan was told the committee’s decision at a coffee shop in what was a tense meeting. VQFF decided that the ad would be removed so that no one would be offended. Subsequently, all flags would be banned from the festival other than the Pride flag. VQFF would donate the fee paid to publish the advertisement to a third-party charity, which Jonathan later discovered was a pro-BDS organization. VQFF told Jonathan that they were neither endorsing or not endorsing BDS. The film festival worked under an anti-oppression framework. When Jonathan asked to see that framework, he was told it was an internal document. The next time Yad b’Yad tried to submit an ad to VQFF it was rejected.

That summer, the VQFF held a panel about boycotts entitled “Why and Why Not? Cultural Boycott.” The festival invited four people affiliated with the BDS movement or who had previously spoken poorly about Jews and Israel publicly. There was no Jewish, Israeli or Zionist representative on the panel – Jonathan had asked if he could participate in the panel, but his request was declined. He watched as the panel’s discussion turned into nasty, antisemitic rhetoric. The film festival told him afterward it was not their intention for the conversation to turn antisemitic.

At the time this panel took place, the gay community was discussing whether they should boycott certain Russian products, especially certain vodkas, because of the Russian government’s homophobia and policies on LGBTQ+ communities in Chechnya and Russia. Jonathan found it troubling that Israel was the only focus of the panel’s discussion about cultural boycotts. The treatment of queers and the boycott of Russian products were not even mentioned.

Yad b’Yad’s momentum in the queer and Jewish communities never recovered. Jonathan blames the negative attention garnered from the VQFF controversy for the group’s demise. Jonathan’s intention in creating Yad b’Yad was for people who are struggling with their Jewish and queer identities – people who did not feel comfortable in traditional Jewish spaces like synagogue, or who may not be out to their family, or out as Jews to their queer community – to have a safe queer and Jewish space. The negative publicity that they received from the VQFF ad made Yad b’Yad an unsafe space. In Jonathan’s opinion, queer spaces in Vancouver were no longer safe for gay Jews to be openly Jewish for a few years. While Yad B’Yad marched in the Pride Parade for a couple of years after the VQFF incident, its social events were not popular. The group no longer exists.

As the inaugural Chair in Transgender Studies at University of Victoria and former dean of graduate studies, Aaron sponsored a film that was made in Israel. He rented the movie theatre Cinecenta from the UVic student society and did most of the advertising. It was a family drama about an Israeli family with a child who performs drag and eventually transitions from male to female. The movie is an interpersonal psychological drama that examines how the Israeli family copes with their trans child. Nobody from the university attended the screening and few people came from the LGBTQ+ community. The theatre was far from full. Those that did attend were: “People I knew from the Jewish community, mostly grey-haired straight people in the Jewish community.” Out of respect for Aaron, people from the left and trans and queer communities quietly boycotted the film rather than holding a rally or other public show of protest. Aaron has not tried to host something like that again because the lack of attendance meant that the event lost a lot of money. He still does not know whether it was anti-Israel sentiment or antisemitism that motivated the boycott.

Debby recently retired from teaching in the department of women’s studies at UVic. As a Jewish feminist, she felt completely invisible. She argues that Jewish women were overrepresented in the feminist, lesbian politics of the 1970s and ’80s. Consequently, she created the first cultural Jewish feminist course in Canada – it was called Jewish Feminist Thought. The course did not focus on Judaism as a religion, but on Jews who were key figures in the feminist movement.

Debby worked alongside Michelle Pujol, who taught the first lesbian course offered at the UVic. After Michelle’s untimely death from cancer in the early ’90s, Debby took over the course. After a few years, another person took over the course. Ten years after that, Debby was given the course to teach once more. It was a disaster. Debby had not kept up with the changes in lesbian identity, queer identity or gender identity, and who Debby once would identify as a lesbian now used the term queer woman as an identifier. There were many student complaints.

It was not Debby’s politics to be in women’s studies. It was just a job. Her activism was elsewhere. As a person who was raised in the 1940s and who studied and worked in the 1950s and ’60s, Debby spent more time on the picket line than attending university classes, protesting racism and supporting the anti-war movement. While she was very active in the women’s liberation movement in England, there were not as many organized movements in Victoria.

Over time, Debby’s activism has changed. She is no longer able to sit for long hours on uncomfortable chairs in church basements, spend the night on a senate floor, or stake out curbs in protest. Her activism now mainly involves giving money, which she now can afford to do and movements need funds to organize.

Debby has been involved in activism against the Israeli Occupation of Palestine. She finds this work painful. The number of people she has found to work with — people who are against the occupation and are pro-Palestinian, but who also support Israel as a state — is a small group. She was involved with If Not Now but found the group of men more interested in hearing themselves talk than making any difference to the situation. She no longer had the patience to sit with alpha political men comparing the size of their analysis, so she and a friend started the group Women in Black Against the Occupation. For a few years, once a month on a Friday night, they would stand at a big intersection with signs that said that they were against the Occupation of Palestine but not against Israel; they protested equating Judaism with Zionism. They were often joined by lots of people.

Today, Debby supports organizations that import dates and olive oil from Palestinian farmers. When COVID protocols isolated many older lesbians who were living alone, she organized a picnic at Beacon Hill Park. She learned from her late partner Donna that it is more important to have a sense of kindness and fairness than a perfect political analysis.

Around three years before the interview took place, Debby, her son and granddaughter traveled to Israel to celebrate her sister’s 70th birthday. Debby’s granddaughter met her Israeli cousin who is the same age. The Canadian and Israeli cousins made a connection and, in Israel, her granddaughter decided to explore her Judaism. Right before Debby’s interview, her granddaughter became a bat mitzvah over the online platform Zoom.

The world is very different now for Bayla who feels like she used to be on the cutting edge of culture. She jokes that now there are 35 labels of gender identity and that half of the kids in her dentist’s child’s class are questioning their gender. Teenagers have so many identity signifiers that she wonders if there are too many options. Nevertheless, she is happy that identity is on much more of a continuum. She wants her community and culture, the queer Jewish culture and particularly the lesbian culture, to be honoured. The queer Jewish and lesbian communities that Bayla belongs to have contributed and continue to contribute so much to the Jewish, the lesbian, and the global community.

Debby sees the term queer as nice but meaningless. Anyone can be queer; being a lesbian used to mean something, she says. For the young people she encounters, though, identifying as a lesbian is an old-fashioned, white, middle-class identity. Debby fought so hard to be recognized as a lesbian that it is difficult for her to see her work being dismissed by the current generation. Debby attends lesbian New Year’s Eve parties and other social opportunities in the community, but finds today’s queer culture boring as compared to the radical women’s movement of her day, when she was on the frontlines. She longs for institutional things like women’s cafes and lesbian presses.

Alan notes that there have been a lot of changes in the past 10 to 12 years. He grew up in a hetero-sexist world where the only example of relationships that he saw were heterosexual. He argues that, for people to feel safe in the world, we must give examples of diverse love and relationships from a young age.

Pat says things have changed so unbelievably fast that the progress is often taken for granted. As a young person, he never dreamed that gay marriage would be possible, for example, or that grandparents would march alongside their gay children. He laughs that today everyone loves the gays.

Although acceptance of queer culture in the Jewish community has come a long way, there is still work to be done. Selina suggests that we make sure queer people are represented on boards and other governance structures, so that queer voices can be accounted for when Jewish organizations do their work. She suggests that organizations have to be intentionally intentional about including marginalized people on their boards.

According to Selina, progress means continuously moving forward; change does not magically appear. She states we should constantly question who feels welcome and who doesn’t feel welcome. Selina defines being inclusive as always asking and checking around the edges. We are never finished challenging the idea of what it looks like to be inclusive.

When Jeff first came out in the early 2000s, there were a lot of stereotypes and myths that he wanted to debunk. The AIDS crisis was still fresh in people's minds. The type of life he was going to have and the possibilities open to him were in question. Jeff remembers, as a teenager, wanting his Jewish youth group to fundraise for a LGBTQ+ organization and his fundraiser being rejected because it did not go with the Jewish values of the organization. Today, in his experience, if someone does not feel comfortable with Jewish queer activities, the person who is uncomfortable can choose not to come rather than the event being canceled. Both Judaism and queerness require you to be proud of who you are and to not let anyone else define you, put you down or push you around, he says. Jeff believes activism is both a Jewish and queer value.

After Jeff came out, his mother, Carole, went through a stage where she would introduce herself as Jewish with a gay son, needing to lay it all out there because she did not want anyone casually saying anything antisemitic or homophobic. When Jeff was a teen and in his early 20s, she thought he would be offended if she asked him if he was gay, but Jeff wonders what would have happened if Carole had asked him in high school, and whether that would have alleviated a lot of stress, pressure, and heartache.

Similarly, being gay was something Jonathan’s mother had to accept, and something she actively learned to accept among her peers in the Jewish support group she created. Jonathan thinks that you can’t really go back, that one could not have predicted what would have happened in all the ‘what if’ situations.

Hope believes that, for queer kids, it often feels like the world is falling apart, and it is beautiful to be able to put the pieces back together. One way to do this, she thinks, is to create queer space at the JCC. In that context, one JQT Vancouver initiative had Carmel set up a booth at the JCC where the group sold rainbow challot – they sold 40 in under an hour. Carmel wondered how a queer organization selling queer Jewish symbols in Jewish space would be received by the community. She found that people cared more about the type of food colouring used to colour the challot than the queer presence in Jewish space. Hope saw the sale while picking her son up from preschool – her son, who loves anything rainbow, was excited to see rainbows and ran towards the booth. It was exciting for Hope to see visibly queer Jews in the space she works and sends her son to preschool.

In another initiative, JQT Vancouver hosted a Purim Drag Story Time at a Jewish public library. It was a transformative experience for one family, who was lovingly navigating their young child’s gender dysphoria. The young child was able to show off their drag character to a fellow drag performer in a Jewish space. Hopefully, presenting Jewish queer people and activities to children from a very young age will make navigating identities easier.

JQT Vancouver could not have existed without the work and lived experiences of the people featured in the BC Jewish Queer & Trans Oral History Project, as well as the work of many others who have not been featured. The sooner the weight of queerness can be lifted off a child’s shoulders and replaced with the culture of queerness, the easier it may be for that person to develop their own sense of self in a loving and accepting way. By telling the story of Max, who cruised synagogues in the early to mid-20th century, the stories of the feminist lesbian seders, queer Jewish weddings and transition ceremonies, and the presence of queer Jewish organizations and classes, we are sharing a queer and/or trans Jewish culture that has existed in British Columbia for almost a century. It often doesn’t take much to make someone who feels alone feel less alone.

By telling queer and/or trans Jewish stories, we hope to share with people and their families (biological and chosen) who are struggling with and/or celebrating their intersectional identities that there is a rich Jewish and queer and/or trans culture in BC. We hope that people feel seen by reading histories that reflect multiple aspects of their identities.

These stories are stories of queer AND Jewish pride. We honour the struggle of the elders who fought to make queer and/or trans bodies legal in public and Jewish spaces. We celebrate people who have changed how we see the possibilities of our identities and show the progress that has yet to be accomplished. We acknowledge the stories that have yet to be told and the identities that are not represented by virtue of the limits of this project. We hope that the stories we have recorded are only the beginning and that the voices herein allow people to feel represented and inspire them to share their stories.